![]() More than 1,400 repairmen worked around the clock, patching the holes in the Yorktown with steel plates, in order to have it ready for Nimitz at Midway.Īfter barely 48 hours in Drydock Number One at the Pearl Harbor Navy Yard, the Yorktown steamed out to join the Hornet and Enterprise 325 miles north of Midway, at a predetermined meeting spot known as “Point Luck.” The Yorktown’s presence caught Japan by surprise they had thought they had disposed of the carrier in the Coral Sea. During the Battle of the Coral Sea, a 551-pound Japanese bomb had hit the Yorktown’s wooden flight deck, smashing through and exploding inside the ship. On May 27, 1942, the USS Yorktown struggled into Pearl Harbor, after traveling 3,000 miles across the Pacific. The aircraft carrier USS Yorktown is shown in dry dock at Pearl Harbor, as it is being readied for the Battle of Midway. carrier had undergone rush repairs just a week before the battle. ![]() Meanwhile, Yamamoto’s two most modern carriers, the Shokaku and Zuikaku, had been damaged in the earlier battle, and were unavailable for use at Midway. James Doolittle’s raid on Tokyo in April 1942, and the Yorktown, which was damaged in the Coral Sea-to the central Pacific, laying a trap for the Japanese. Nimitz rushed three U.S carriers-the Enterprise and Hornet, which had participated in Col. The Battle of Midway confirmed the carrier’s emergence as the key naval vessel in World War II, displacing the battleship. The Battle of the Coral Sea, in which Allied forces turned back Japan’s invasion of Port Moresby in New Guinea, was the first naval battle in history in which the ships involved never sighted or fired directly at each other. This failure would come back to haunt the Japanese in May 1942, when the first major carrier battle took place in the South Pacific. ![]() aircraft carriers in the fleet at the time were at Pearl Harbor on Decemall were out to sea on maneuvers, and all escaped unscathed. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |